


Nausea

by mistleto3



Series: Sarufem!mi [6]
Category: K (Anime)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 04:31:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6223942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistleto3/pseuds/mistleto3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Oh, my God, I thought you were going to die. Please don’t ever scare me like that again"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nausea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kuroyui](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuroyui/gifts).



> Based on a drabble prompt on tumblr sent by kuroyuichan from [this](http://mikototsu-trash.tumblr.com/post/140642211428/right-to-the-good-parts-prompt-list) list.
> 
> This story can also be found on [Tumblr](http://mikototsu-trash.tumblr.com/post/140881544288/i-love-femmisaki-too-and-i-really-like-rule63-xd)

It wasn't often Saruhiko got phone calls from Izumo, so when he heard the bartender's voice on the line a sense of foreboding settled in his gut. Something told him this would not be good news.

For once, he left his work unfinished, the papers still scattered on the desk. He didn't even tell anyone that he was leaving. As he strode to the exit, Seri asked if he was okay, and he blew past her without a word. Saruhiko made it to the hospital within half an hour, where he saw Izumo standing in the waiting room, leaning against the wall. The bartender raised his hand and gestured him to come over.

"She's not long come out of the procedure room. This way." Saruhiko followed him stiffly, his hands shaking in his pockets. Izumo opened the door for him, and allowed Saruhiko to enter first.

Misaki was small. Saruhiko was used to that. The top of her head was barely level with his collarbone, and she had always been wiry in build. But seeing her dwarfed in the white sheets of a hospital bed... she looked so tiny. So fragile. Misaki never looked fragile. Despite her small stature, she was solid; her limbs were wrapped in lean, hard muscle, and there were very few grown men she couldn't take in a fight. Hell, even Saruhiko wouldn't challenge her to a battle of brute strength.

And now she was lying in a hospital bed, her left arm encased in a cast, IV lines trailing from her wrist, bruises and scrapes and slashes blemishing almost every exposed inch of her pale skin (since when had she been pale? Even in the winter, Misaki's cheeks kept their sun kissed glow.) Thankfully, she was at least awake, chattering, if quietly, with Anna and Rikio, who stood beside her bed. If her eyes were closed she would have looked like she was dead.

“What the hell were you thinking, Misaki?” Saruhiko snapped the words, uninterested that he had interrupted the conversation between Misaki and the other two Homra members. “Walking around on your own so close to a gang hideout? When Izumo called and said you’d been stabbed... I thought you were going to die. Don’t scare me like that again.” He wasn’t shouting, but his voice was low and serious, and it trembled with the echoes of suppressed fear that only Misaki knew him well enough to pick up on. He strode over to her bed and caught her little hand in his, gripping it tightly and ignoring the way Rikio and Izumo looked at each other in surprise. Misaki hadn’t told anyone in Homra that they were together yet, and even if they had known, Saruhiko wasn't one to be so open about showing it, especially in front of his old clan. The protective grip he had on her hand betrayed the anxiety that had wracked him since getting that phone call.

“I didn’t think there was still a gang hideout there. We raided that stupid drug ring over a year ago.”

He clicked his tongue in exasperation. “All the more reason for them to hate Homra.”

“And I wasn’t stabbed either. I got nicked with a knife. It’s no big deal; they said I can go home tomorrow. I didn’t even need surgery, they just put my arm in a cast and sewed up the cuts.”

“What happened to your arm?”

“My wrist is broken. I have a couple cracked ribs too, and a concussion, but otherwise I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You could have been killed. Your aura isn’t as strong as it used to be now the Slate is gone.”

“I know that! I wasn’t going looking for a fight or anything.”

“You’re still an idiot.”

“Oi, you could at least not insult me when I’m in the damn hospital.”

Saruhiko was quietly relieved to hear her fighting back like she always did; the way her cheeks coloured indignantly was reassuring. She couldn’t be too badly hurt. “It’s your own fault you’re in here in the first place.”

“I’ve had worse injuries from fighting with you.”

“I was never aiming to kill you. These guys wouldn't think twice to doing that.”

“I know, that’s why I played dead when I realised couldn’t win so they’d leave me be.”

Saruhiko was somewhat impressed by that; Misaki would never normally admit defeat, even if it meant risking her life, and playing dead was quick thinking on her part. Not that he would admit that. He simply clicked his tongue and squeezed her hand, sitting down in the seat beside her bed. The image of her lying in an alley, bloodied and bruised, unnaturally still… He felt nauseous.

There was a lull in the conversation, until Izumo finally asked what the Homra members in the room had been thinking as they watched the pair argue, stunned into silence.

“So, you two are a couple, huh?”

Misaki’s cheeks reddened bashfully, and Saruhiko gave a stiff nod. He had expected to be uncomfortable, being surrounded by so many Red clansmen and having them grill him about his relationship with their only adult female member. They were like her brothers, and isn’t it the job of a brother to hate his sister’s boyfriend? The scar over his old Homra insignia itched.

But they were smiling. Even Anna’s lips curved up slightly at the corners.

“I was wondering when you’d finally get together.” Izumo commented.

“What do you mean?” Misaki asked, keeping her eyes fixed on the floor.

“It was pretty obvious you had a thing for each other, even back when Fushimi was in Homra.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Misaki grumbled.

Izumo chuckled. Rikio's mouth was open slightly, as if ready to start spewing a stream of questions at the pair, when Izumo cut in. “Well, as long as you’re happy. Come on, let’s leave them to it.” He led Anna and Rikio from the room, and Misaki sighed gratefully. Saru looked over at her, and chuckled quietly at the way her cheeks blazed, then gently tousled her auburn hair. She leaned into his hand.

“I’m sorry.”

He sighed. “Just be more careful.”

* * *

 It had taken a long time for Saruhiko to get used to sleeping next to Misaki, and now he found that he struggled to sleep without her. Because she wriggled and kicked and snored and talked in her sleep, and it was now too quiet to sleep alone. The surprising amount of heat her tiny body kicked out made him vastly uncomfortable, but without her he was too cold. He missed how soft her skin was, how peaceful she looked compared to the tough-guy persona she put on when she was awake, how effortlessly her small body slotted in against his own. He lay in their bed staring at the ceiling for hours until he finally slipped into a fitful sleep.

The mental image of her lying in that alley resurfaced in his mind as he slumbered. He watched the men encircle her, corner her, close in. He watched them kick her, punch her, spit on her. Their insults and her muffled grunts rang off the walls of the alleyway as she gritted her teeth, desperate not to give them the satisfaction of making her cry out. After a few minutes, she stopped fighting back, stopped struggling, stopped breathing…

He woke up gasping for air, and stumbled to the bathroom to retch bile into the toilet; he hadn’t eaten since he had gotten the phone call that she was in hospital, so there was nothing in his stomach to throw up. Saruhiko couldn’t get back into their bed again after that.

* * *

There were dark violet shadows under his eyes when he arrived at the hospital the next day to pick Misaki up. He dropped the bag of clean clothes that he had brought her onto the bed, avoiding her eyes, but she noticed how exhausted he looked anyway.

“Did you not sleep very well last night?”

He clicked his tongue.

"Yeah, me neither.” Misaki admitted. That surprised Saruhiko, but he maintained his cool, passive expression. It was oddly comforting to him to know that she couldn’t sleep without him, either.

“What about food, have you eaten anything today?” She pressed.

Again, he said nothing.

“Saru, you idiot. Don’t make yourself sick, I can’t look after you with my arm in this damn thing.” She gestured to the sling around her neck.

“Right.”

“Come on…” Her cheeks burned. “I-I need you to help me get dressed.”

“Don’t get all bashful as if I’ve never seen you naked before.”

“Shut up.”

He helped her out of the hospital gown, and the sickness rose in his throat again. Mottled indigo bruises stained large patches of the skin of her torso. A bandage was taped over the wound on her side, where the knife had come so close to turning the beating to murder. There were more scrapes and gashes across her skin than Saruhiko could count. Her back was even worse, he noticed as he turned her around to fasten her bra. He was glad when she was finally fully clothed, and most of the wounds were covered.

He couldn’t stop seeing those injuries; he could barely look at Misaki without wincing for the rest of the day. Even if the worst of it was covered by her clothes, the scrape on her jaw and the bruise on her cheekbone were stark against her skin every time he glanced towards her. She was quieter than usual too. She had tucked herself under his arm and sat in silence, playing on her handheld game console with the volume turned all the way down as he worked. Misaki was usually such a restless person, unable to keep quiet for more than half an hour at a time before she needed to start chattering mindlessly about something. He held her close to him, not sure what to say to her; he had never seen a fight shake her so badly before. The reality of how weak she had become now that the Slates were gone seemed hard to swallow.

Misaki had fallen asleep like that, her head on his shoulder. Her pain meds had made her drowsy, and by the sounds of it she had gotten just as little sleep as him the night before. Saruhiko put down his laptop as soon as he noticed that she had nodded off, not that he had been able to concentrate anyway, and carried her to bed.

The tank top and shorts that she usually slept in revealed far too much of her marked and broken skin for Saruhiko’s comfort, even in the dark. A bar of amber light from the streetlights outside their apartment filtered into the room from between the curtains and fell across a deep gash on her arm. Saruhiko’s nausea had returned, and his stomach writhed. She had asked him to come with her, last night. Rikio had invited her out for a drink, and Saruhiko told her he was too busy with work. Really, he just hadn’t wanted to. So she had walked home alone.

Saruhiko rolled out of bed, having become too agitated to lie down beside her as if nothing was wrong. It was long past midnight, and despite his tiredness, Saruhiko couldn’t relax enough to sleep. He splashed his face with cold water, hoping that it would calm the nausea in his stomach, then got dressed, attaching his sword to the belt of his jeans, and quietly left the apartment.

* * *

 Saruhiko approached the abandoned house, the old drug den of the now scattered gang. Homra had raided them a few months before Mikoto and Tatara’s deaths, and now their remnants were hiding out here, safe while Homra had more important things to deal with than petty drug dealers and loan sharks. Across the road was the alley where Misaki was attacked. Saruhiko noticed as he walked through that there was still blood on the concrete there, dried to a dark rust colour. He felt bile rise in his throat again, but kept his composure, gripping the hilt of his sword tighter.

When they had attacked Misaki, the thugs had surprised her. She had fought back as best she could, and given some of them quite a beating. But when it was four against one and she had been tipsy and hadn’t expected the attack, there was only so long she could hold out.

Saruhiko surprised them too that night. He had picked the lock and crept into the house silent as a shadow. In the front room, he found two men smoking something that had a foul smell, one sitting on the exposed floorboards and one on a stained, threadbare couch. The man sitting on the floor crumpled before either of them was aware that they weren’t alone, hit in the temple with the hilt of a throwing knife. The other turned towards him. By the time he had comprehended what was happening through the stupor of his high, Saruhiko had picked up an empty beer bottle from the windowsill beside him and cracked it over his skull. A sadistic grin spread across his face, his teeth bared in what was almost a snarl. His hand twitched for his sword, but he resisted the urge to plunge it between the lowlife’s ribs, if only because he knew Misaki would be angry at him if he killed them in cold blood. He would come to regret it too eventually, he knew. But the bloodlust that seethed and burned behind his teeth couldn’t see that far into the future. It only saw the bruises on the nearest man’s knuckles, bruises he had gotten from Misaki’s ribs.

The noise had alerted the other residents, and he heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

“What the hell is going on down here?” A woman’s voice. Saruhiko had her by the throat as soon as she rounded the corner, and slammed her against the nearest wall. She had a burn on her cheek, no doubt from Misaki’s attempts to fight back.

“Yesterday evening, you and your cronies attacked a female member of Homra, am I correct?” His voice was emotionless, cold, almost taunting.

“I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about!” She choked the words through his tightening grip on her neck.

“Surely you must. She’s about two inches shorter than you, ginger hair, has the aura of the Red clan…” He lit the hand on her neck with his old crimson flames, just for a moment, as though reminding her. She shrieked, and Saruhiko’s sadistic grin widened.

“Alright, alright! I remember her. We jumped her in the alley across the street last night. We didn’t mean to kill her, I swear!” The woman’s voice was desperate, and a tear dripped from her lashes onto the burn on her cheek.

“She’s not dead, lucky for you. But if any of you ever lay a finger on her ever again, you will be.” Saruhiko’s voice was deadpan, almost bored as he released her, and she slid, gasping, down the wall.

Her sobbing had distracted him, and he heard the final inhabitant of the house enter the room a moment too late. A man rounded the corner, his eye swollen shut, and pointed the muzzle of a gun at Saruhiko. There was barely any time to react. His blue aura flared instinctively between them, but he was weakened without the Slates, and he hadn’t been quick enough to properly deflect the bullet.

* * *

 The crack of a gunshot sent a shock of cold anxiety proliferating through Misaki’s body. When she had woken to find Saruhiko had vanished, there was little doubt in her mind about where he had gone. She was running by the time she reached the alleyway, the flash of blue through the window of the deserted house and the sickening sound of a gun made her forget the fear she felt, returning to that place. A different kind of terror had swallowed it. She couldn’t hear anything but her blood roaring in her ears.

The door to the house was open, and she darted inside heedlessly. In the middle of the room lay Saruhiko, with a pool of blood spreading across the tarnished floorboards around him. Two of the men who attacked her were crumpled on the ground not far from him, unconscious. The third man had a knife embedded in the flesh just below his collarbone. In the corner of the room, the woman sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, sobbing quietly and clutching her throat.

Misaki hurried to Saruhiko’s side, and the relief she felt at seeing his eyes open, fixed on her own, almost made her legs give out underneath her.

“What the hell were you thinking?” The words she had intended to shout came out as a whisper. “Idiot, idiot, idiot!” She quickly located the source of the bleeding- thankfully, the bullet had hit his shoulder, and nothing more vital. He had reacted in time to deflect it away from his torso.

“Stay with me, okay?” Her voice was fraught as she pressed her hand to the wound, hoping to stem the steady flow of blood oozing between her fingers. “I’m going to get you some help.”

* * *

 Saruhiko woke from the surgery to remove the bullet to find Misaki asleep in the chair by his bed, her fingers tangled with his.

“Misaki…” His voice was slurred as he turned his head towards her, still recovering from the anaesthetic.

She blinked awake, then leaned forward quickly in her seat. “Saru, are you alright? How are you feeling?”

“Fine…” Except from the throbbing in his shoulder. “Do you have my glasses?”

She passed them to him, and her concerned expression came into focus as he put them on. She had her lower lip caught between her teeth.

He clicked his tongue. “What’s that look for?”

“I thought you were going to die.” Her small hand shook slightly in his. “Stupid monkey, what the hell is wrong with you? You tell me to be more careful then you go and do something idiotic like this and get yourself _shot._ ” Her voice cracked on the final word.

Saruhiko didn’t have anything to say to that. Whatever he had been trying to do, it was a bad idea in hindsight. His anger had never gotten the better of him like that before. And of course, it had barely been more than a year since Misaki had found Tatara in a pool of his own blood, what would it have done to her, if he had died in the same way? Shame twisted uncomfortably in his chest. The way he had acted in cold blood, in sheer sadism, was disconcertingly similar to the way _that guy_ had acted. There was the sickness again.

The sound of Misaki’s breath hitching as she tried to swallow back tears brought him back to himself, and he squeezed her hand weakly.

“Sorry.” He finally said.

“Idiot. Don’t scare me like that ever again, you hear?” Funny, just two days ago he had been saying the same thing to her. “I can’t lose you again. Not you too. Not again.” She paused for a moment. “I-I love you, damn it.”

Saruhiko blinked in surprise; she had only said that to him a handful of times. Those words, in her voice… he couldn’t help but find it soothing to hear. He pulled her by the hand down towards him to press his lips against hers briefly. “You won’t. I love you, too.”

She carefully lay down on the bed beside him, pulling his arm around her and resting her head on his uninjured shoulder. “Thank you.” She said after a moment.

Saruhiko gave her a questioning look.

“Even if you’re stupid and went about it like a complete idiot, you still did what you did for me, to protect me, so thank you.” She mumbled.

Saruhiko didn’t know what to say to that, but she spoke again before he had to come up with something. “Even though I can take care of myself, and you don’t have to protect me just because I’m a girl or whatever.”

“I didn’t do it because you’re a girl and I think I need to protect you. I did it because you’re my girlfriend.” The word rolled awkwardly off his tongue. It tasted foreign. Misaki. His girlfriend. The prospect would never stop being strange to him. “I couldn’t sit by and do nothing after what they did to you.”

“Well, if you insist on going on dumb suicide missions, at least bring me with you. I’ve got your back, Saru.”

He kissed her forehead in quiet gratitude, pulling her in closer against his side, where she settled in and relaxed, her good arm around him. Soon, her eyelids began to flutter slowly, then slid closed. Within a few minutes she had fallen back to sleep asleep against him, and the sound of her slow, deep breathing was therapeutic to him. The tiredness of the past couple of days that had been kept away only by pure adrenalin suddenly dropped its weight on Saruhiko, and he let himself drift off to sleep.

When Reisi and Seri arrived with a handful of Saruhiko’s colleagues from Sceptre 4 an hour or so later, they found them lying like that, sleeping in each other’s arms. The sound of the door handle being turned but not pushed open, and Seri’s suggestion that they should come back later woke Saruhiko, but he kept his eyes closed. His squad were muttering to each other about the girl under his arm in distinctly gossipy tones as they walked away. _Let them,_ he thought. He didn’t care if they knew any more. It would be easier to protect her if the world knew that Misaki was his to protect. He had already failed to do that so many times, and every time he did it made him sick with himself. But the idea of people seeing her on his arm, people knowing that he was hers and she was his, settled his stomach. As stupid and stubborn as she could be, she was beautiful, she was strong, she was caring, and she was Saruhiko’s.

**Author's Note:**

> The next fic in this series, [Enemy Territory](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7256773), follows directly on from this one and deals with Sceptre 4's reaction to both Saruhiko's injury and the news of his relationship with Misaki.


End file.
